Description: The aim of this research was to trace the stages in Gregory's career, and the writings he produced during each of them, in order to examine his interest in biblical interpretation, and to link the form and content of his exegesis with the audiences which he was attempting to reach. Gregory's Old Testament homilies, the "Homilies on the Gospels," the "Pastoral Rule" and the "Dialogues" differ considerably one from another in literary form, in content, and in purpose. There were marked changes in Gregory's life from his first commitment to asceticism in the mid 570's, to his death as bishop of Rome in 604. Attention would be given concentrated on his explicitly exegetical writings: the Pastoral Rule and the Dialogues will be considered with the limited aim of assessing their relationship to his exegesis, in the Introduction, the main developments in Western biblical studies in the two centuries before Gregory will be sketched in broad outline, in order to establish a terminology for exegetical literary forms, and to draw attention to the forms which Gregory chose to adopt.